


A Seer\\'s Burden

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Humor, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-20
Updated: 2008-08-20
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: The final war is over, and Harry defeated the Dark Lord. Things are slowly getting back to normal now. At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Sybill Trelawney Sees a Dark future...             ...





	A Seer\\'s Burden

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

On one otherwise fine day, Professor Sinistra finally sighted the shooting star I was waiting for. This star alone would not have been all too important, but together with what I had Seen before! It was clear that something horrible was lying ahead of us.

For some reason I seemed to be the only one to notice it. Firenze honestly told me to find a new subject or retire! He had, of course, not Seen any of the signs foreboding the evil yet to come, so I had to be wrong. I just didn’t understand it. Centaurs are so intelligent, so full of magic, but, Oh!, so arrogant. The Centaurs Saw the rise and fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, his second rise, they Saw Harry Potter fighting him, winning this great war for the side of the good. They Saw the flowing and soft changing of time, the slow process of the future shaping, approaching, and becoming the present. But why didn’t they See it this time? They said they are not interested in the small things, they only See the big events. But, alas! this would be an event of great importance and great horrors!

During the war, the Centaurs and I had found some kind of mutual respect, and they helped us quite a lot. Centaurs are so easily insulted, so that when my first anger had worn away, I apologized. Yes, I really apologized to those... for being justly enraged. Well, it’s always the wiser one who gives in, isn’t it? After all, I might have said a thing or two I shouldn’t have said.

However, after my apology we didn’t speak of what I Saw and of what this shooting star meant, just for the sake of... friendship? Is it already friendship that I found with the Centaurs? Anyway, I was entirely on my own in the actions that had to be taken. I certainly couldn’t tell the other Professors, they took me for ridiculous, especially Headmistress McGonagall. And after all, I couldn’t know if I could still trust all of them.

Exactly what was awaiting us? Well, everyone knew that there were some Death Eaters still around, hiding, biding their time. Now I Saw them, ready to take action again, planning to take over Hogwarts from within. I assumed they would do that slowly, step by step, hoping that no one suspects anything until it is already too late. I believed they would find willing supporters among the students, maybe even among the staff, and will use the Impirius Curse on others, or even Polyjuice Potion.

The shooting star allowed me to calculate the day when they would step into the open. That date was just ten days after the shooting star was sighted! I had to do something.

Over the next days, I started looking carefully for any signs of unusual behaviour, and I checked my instruments of Seeing more often.

Just six days before the great disaster, I saw Minerva walk around the corridors of Hogwarts in her cat shape. She also appeared to communicate with Mrs Norris. Mr Filch, on the other hand, seemed to have lost some of his usual interest in the doings of the students.

Sometimes I wondered if I was maybe reading too much into such little occurrences but in this situation, anything could have had a deeper meaning.

Just a day later I noticed drops of unicorn blood on Professor Flitwick’s hand, although he claimed it was just an experimental spell (to transform metals or something, as far as I got it) that had gone haywire. Mr Filch caught two Slytherin first years out on the grounds after hours. Several students had started to behave oddly in ways I couldn’t really explain in all cases, but somehow I felt it nonetheless. Or maybe I was going insane under all this stress.

Shortly after that there was a Grim in my tea cup. Maybe I should not have played my little drama on all those third years whose deaths I pretended to See... Anyway, this Grim was real, all too real for my taste. There were oddly twisted mist-like shapes in the crystal orb, too. I couldn’t find an applicable interpretation at once, but I was working on it. Every sign had a meaning, it just took much time and talent to see what it was.

Our newly appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Nymphadora Lupin, appeared to be rather trustworthy. Of course you can’t ever be sure about anyone, but her aura looked good. She even listened to me when I told her about the omens I Saw, although I could sense she did not quite believe everything. It was nonetheless good to know that she would keep an eye open as well.

One day before the Death Eaters would strike I had come to the realisation that whatever would happen the next day, it would be just too big to prevent. I had failed. Silently, I begged the world to forgive me.

I got up on “The Day”, as I called it, and tried to go about my daily routine as usually. Of course I kept my eyes open for anything weird. And not just my eyes, but all my Seeing senses as well.

I did a tour of the castle after I got up, but I found nothing. That worried me even more.

With growing uneasiness I went down to the Great Hall for breakfast and took my seat at the Staff Table. It was painful to see all of my colleagues just sitting there, chatting about this and that, about their subjects and their students and their families. I had finally decided that distrusting all my colleagues wasn’t such a good idea, and tried to tell them all, but they wouldn’t listen! Well, I was not going to tell them again now.

Every now and then one of my fellow teachers would throw me a look, probably to find out if I was going to do something freaky anytime soon. Professor Lupin tried to be kind and start a conversation with me, but I suppose I was too obviously in thoughts, and she gave up eventually.

After breakfast everything was still calm. Well, not calm; a school full of students is never calm. But at least there was nothing suspicious going on. My anxiety was growing stronger as the students and teachers left the Great Hall in small groups. I had to go to my first lesson now too, and what if something happened just then, when all the teachers were scattered all over the school and distracted? Everyone felt too safe anyway after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was killed.

I decided to let my class work in pairs and just practice what we had done the previous lesson – interpreting the images in tea leaves – , always hoping that none of them would See a Dark sign. I didn’t even dare to look all too closely at their leaves. If there was something and the students just didn’t recognise it, I could still pretend it had never been there. That was an absolutely ridiculous and foolish thought, but I just couldn’t find the necessary strength to search for more signs.

I knew of course that such behaviour was unworthy of a true Seer. We have to know what is going to come, no matter how wonderful or terrible it may be. It is our pleasure and reward to See the good and our duty and burden to See the evil.

I told myself that whatever was about to come over us, it would come anyway. There was little I could still do. Nothing but wait. And for the first time in my life I didn’t want to See the future, didn’t want to know what would happen. I didn’t want to See people fighting, people dying, people get injured and tortured. Normal eyes can easily be closed, but the eyes of a Seer always See. And even if we could stop it, we wouldn’t do it. The world needs us too badly.

In the breaks the students ran about the castle, joking and quarrelling like always. Cheerful, oblivious of the fate hovering inches before them. A fate, getting ready to swallow us all up as soon as time thrusts us forward into its fangs.

At lunchtime, the normality in Hogwarts castle was beginning to tear at my nerves more than ever before. I had by now figured out that anyone who was up to something evil would choose the night time to do so, thus catching us asleep and unawares.

The afternoon was just as dangerously calm as the morning had been, calm before a storm that would undoubtedly come.

At supper that night I must have looked really tired and sick, for Professor Lupin asked me if she should go to Madame Pomfrey with me, or at least give me a sleeping potion. I refused because I had already decided that I needed to stay awake in order to alert the rest of the school as soon as the invasion started.

I hated the thought of being alone in my rooms when the night came. I imagined how I would be sitting there, listening to all the tiny sounds of the castle, jumping at every noise. Instead, I asked Professor Sinistra if I could come to her class that night, and she had no objections. We may not share the same understanding of the stars, but we always got along quite well, and I really appreciated her company that night.

The class started, students looking curiously at me. I didn’t offer an explanation, and they left me alone. Time crawled forward.

I could hardly restrain myself by then; I wanted to run around, to tell everyone that something was going to happen today, within in the next few hours or even minutes. But of course I couldn’t.

The large clock in the Astronomy tower struck eleven o’clock, and the hands kept crawling… and crawling… I could never before have measured how terrible it was to know that something would happen within the next hour. It was always just a phrase, “within the next hour, you’ll read your tealeaves and discuss what you See,” I had said to my students so often. But this time an hour became a horrible entity. Why do we divide our days into hours at all? Hours are such a cruel thing. So short when you need time, and so long when you fear what comes.

Time went by, slowly, and by ten minutes to midnight I had closed my eyes. I half expected the ceiling to crush down on me, or fire to fill the room, or the tower to fall in on itself. Nothing like that happened. The hands of the clocks kept going, unimpressed by my distress.

The clock struck midnight. And then it just kept going as though nothing had happened. Well, actually nothing _had_ happened. Midnight had come and gone again, and the school was still sound and safe. Maybe there had been a delay in the plans, or maybe I had caught the wrong date somehow, or maybe...

“Sybill?” Sinistra ripped me from my thoughts, “The students have all gone, and you’re still sitting here, looking as though you were expecting the end of the world!”

“Well, I was”, I replied and went down into the castle again.

I finally noticed how tired I was, and when I went to bed at about one o’clock I fell asleep immediately.

I got up quite early the next morning despite the fact that I was still tired. I was surprised to find out that I was still alive.

I got up cautiously and went out onto the corridor. All was quiet. I went up the stairs to look around the upper floors, but there was nothing extraordinary to be seen. I even went down into the dungeons, with the same result. I finally allowed myself to breathe freely again.

Still I wondered why nothing had happened yesterday. Nothing at all! But how could all the things I had Seen have been wrong? All the omens the Sight showed me and all that I observed by more earthly means could not have been just... nothing! I couldn’t believe it. I must have made some error concerning the date.

Firenze, that insufferable... was of course in the best of spirits. Knew nothing would happen, knew it all along. Knew I was just making things up; knew I got everything wrong again like always. Just wait Firenze, one of these days I will prove you wrong!

I can’t remember having ever been so happy to see the whole school assembled for breakfast. Everyone was as cheerful as ever, knowing nothing of the horrors I had Seen coming. I was very much relieved, yes. But I was also worried.

I checked my calculations on the date three times, and they were perfect. However, I found no satisfying explanation for the lack of.... anything happening. Maybe the Dark side did not dare attempt the final blow because I kept “nosing around“ (as our dear Professor Lupin called it) and would have found some solid proof eventually. Or maybe there was a change in their plans for other reasons, and I just haven’t Seen this change coming. I was, after all, rather busy, and recent changes in the flowing of time don’t manifest in the way larger currents do. What ever it was that really happened (with the help of the Sight I will, however, try and find out) – I am more than glad nothing bad happened that day. To a Seer, it is always a disturbing experience to be (or seem to be) mistaken, but it can be a good bit of a relief, too. After all I no longer had to carry the burden of knowing about a horrible future getting ready to leap at us all from deep within the shadows of time.

For now, but only for now, I was freed of that burden.


End file.
